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The Bridge Alliance's David Nevins asks: Were we as naive in 1985, when "We Are the World" came out, as we are today?
What comes after all the preaching to the choir about our need for unity?
May 11 2020
Nevins is a co-founder of the Bridge Alliance, a coalition of almost 100 organizations seeking to strengthen democracy. (The Bridge Alliance Education Fund is a funder of The Fulcrum.)
<div>This first weekend of May was a deeply moving time for me.<br/></div><p>It started with the <a href="https://weaving.us" target="_blank">#Weaving Community</a> Zoom gathering of leadership partners working at a blistering pace to maximize our service to neighbors and actions in this most challenging time for all of us.</p><p>That same evening, I was moved to tears listening to the prayers of Bishop T.D. Jakes during "The Call to Unite," a 24-hour global livestream event. He prayed for all of us: the poor and the privileged, impoverished souls and those who have no compassion.</p><p>It is so easy to be swept away with the desire for "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/column/david-brooks" target="_blank">The Great Reset</a>," as David Brooks had so eloquently expressed in his New York Times column that same day — a reset of our society based on compassionate listening, on core values that embrace ideas of caring, on a declaration of interdependence. I was among those swept away.</p><p>Yes, we all want to "<a href="https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnlennon/imagine.html" target="_blank">Imagine</a><i>"</i> as John Lennon did almost 50 years ago. We want to imagine what can emerge from this moment is a new and better normal. </p><p>But it's fair to wonder if we are merely the dreamers that Lennon sang to, "hoping someday you'll join us." While reflecting, and feeling deeply connected to my fellow brothers and sisters, I can't help but wonder if there is a naivete surrounding our words of coming together. </p><p>My powerful emotions of hope are quickly brought back to the reality of a divided country as I turn on the news and interact with friends who are in a totally different place — choosing not to imagine anything new or different. They benefit from and prefer the "old normal" over some unknown future.</p><p>Are we deluding ourselves to think that the coronavirus pandemic will become a time for us to truly come together as a nation? We've seen this before. We felt it in 1969 at Woodstock, the pop culture music event of the decade — if not for all time — when hundreds of thousands of us celebrated love, peace and happiness. And we felt it in 1985, when the country banded together and sang "We Are the World" to fight famine in Africa.</p><p>Those lyrics from 35 years ago resonate for our new moment of crisis: "There comes a time / when we heed a certain call, / when the world must come together as one. / There are people dying / oh, and it's time to lend a hand to life / — the greatest gift of all."</p><p>Were we as naive then as we are today? And if not how can today be different?</p><p>That first Saturday of this month was a beautiful day here in South Florida. Out on the golf course, I could see my doubts playing out before my eyes. My more progressive friends wearing their face masks were carefully practicing social distancing. But my more conservative friends acted as if life was totally normal, caring little about the risks of close contact, ignoring the guidelines and verbalizing their feeling that this is much ado about nothing.</p><p>And so while uplifted by the preaching of unity, of a day ahead in which we are together as one, reality tells me this is just half the story. It is not the story of mainstream America I see on TV, in the news or in my life. Nor is it what speaks to the complete truth of what is happening.</p><p>We speak of listening first, but are we really listening to what many Americans are saying and feeling? Are we just preaching to the choir to make ourselves feel better?</p><p>Last month the Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/opinion/coronavirus-immunity-trump.html" target="_blank">lamented</a> the country is "locked in a polarized, binary argument about lives versus livelihoods." We are debating the merits of healthy bodies and souls versus the health of our economy — when both are imperative. We are talking past each other or, even worse, we are not talking at all even as Covid-19 spreads among us. </p><p>If we can't come together during a pandemic what does that say about the society that we live in, about who we are as a people? If we can't "harmonize our need to protect ourselves from the coronavirus and our need to get back to work," as Friedman neatly summarized the challenge, how will we ever become the sharing, caring and pluralistic society so many friends and colleagues speak about as they labor to bridge our social and political differences? </p><p>I am deeply conflicted, as perhaps our country is. </p><p>On an emotional level I have been so moved to be part of all the recent Zoom calls, webinars and media events seeking to bring us together.</p><p>But I need — and our country needs — more. We need a realistic plan for turning these beautiful ideas into something more tangible. It needs to somehow get us beyond preaching to the choir about unity, something that simply does not resonate with 45 percent of our fellow citizens. </p><p>So often today we praise and give honor to the essential workers who have become heroes to us all. They are going about their lives without the luxury of thinking about a new normal or pontificating about a "great reset." </p><p>After walking down many roads these last 50 years, I am still asking "How many seas must the white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?" </p><p>I so want to believe that "<a href="https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/beatles/allyouneedislove.html" target="_blank">All You Need is Love</a>," but I cannot help but wonder if we are just "<a href="http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/blowin-wind/" target="_blank">Blowin' in the Wind</a>." And if we are, may we find the answers there.</p>
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David L. Nevins argues, "It is time for the vision of Jefferson and the Framers to be realized."
Leadership must evolve or we will remain in crisis
Feb 20 2020
Nevins is a co-founder of the Bridge Alliance, a coalition of 100 organizations seeking to strengthen democracy. (Disclosure: The Bridge Alliance Education Fund is a funder of The Fulcrum.)
We are less than a year away from the next presidential election and the dysfunction will surely be as great, or greater, than it has been in the past. Does anyone really believe any of the candidates will solve our problems? Unlikely.
<p>The media usually overplays the importance of the outcome in determining the future direction of our country. But our national elections merely validate a leadership ideal and process that is systematically flawed. The focus of our elections must change from the desire for charismatic leaders to a focus on an in-depth national dialogue that explores the complexity of the issues that divide us. </p><p>Thomas Jefferson recognized that democracy was born from discourse and discussion, and that the resulting discussion would overflow with differing perspectives and opinions. Our Framers were a visionary group of men who believed ideological differences would ultimately lead to inquiry, and inquiry to truth. In their writings to each other, they discussed how civil discourse and critical thought were essential for their grand experiment in democracy — notwithstanding their tendency to demonize each other through anonymous writings as they jockeyed for political dominance. It is their collective vision that has stood the test of 243 years. </p><p>It is time for the vision of Jefferson and the Framers to be realized. "E pluribus unum" (out of many, one) must become the standard we demand of our candidates and of our elected officials. We must demand a new politics that allows room for people from different parties and with different beliefs to sit around a table and make the tough decisions everyone knows need to be made. And we need to trust in the intentions of the loyal opposition to be a differing perspective for the public good. For this to happen, though, we need a new type of leadership.</p><p>The Bridge Alliance is a group of approximately 100 organizations working toward healthy self-governance in our country. As part of this work, we believe in uplifting the role of citizens to participate and demand better leadership from all sides of the political spectrum.</p><p>Along with many of our members, we are starting a dialogue on the type of leadership We The People would like to see, and we are engaging citizens in this dialogue. Members like <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/national-conversation-project" target="_self">National Conversation Project</a>, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/national-institute-for-civil-discourse" target="_self">National Institute of Civil Discourse</a>, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/living-room-conversations" target="_self">Living Room Conversations</a>, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/essential-partners" target="_self">Essential Partners</a>, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/leadership-now-project" target="_self">Leadership Now</a> and others are teaching new leadership models and demonstrating how to practice new leadership skills in our everyday lives. Review the list below and ask yourself, "How can we demand more from our leaders?"</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://thefulcrum.us/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjc3NTE5Mi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NDEzMTk0NX0.IM7vApe8IkLb3NHHlLF_WYIQ2LxJPeenlv8lJwj4Jxk/image.png?width=980" id="a6e8e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d9b50d03fa0301c2bdc73e0afd2d8c85" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">"How can we demand more from our leaders?," asks David L. Nevins.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Courtesy: Bridge Alliance Education Fund</small></p><p><br/></p><p>If you share my concern that our leadership in Washington hasn't shown the civility and critical thinking needed to address the serious problems facing our country, please join me and others to create a grassroots effort to activate and generate the positive changes our country so profoundly needs.<br/></p><p>Like many of my friends and associates, you might believe the system can never change. I say that our Founding Fathers were considered to be idealists by some, and that the Constitution they designed still endures more than two centuries later. We too can make lasting change. We can and must build upon their brilliant and exemplary framework to achieve their collective vision.</p>
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We can and must embrace our diversity as the operating system of our nation, write the leaders of the Bridge Alliance.
Diverse people must be in every room where decisions are made
Aug 20 2019
Molineaux and Nevins are co-founders of the Bridge Alliance, a coalition of 100 democracy strengthening organizations. (Disclosure: The Bridge Alliance Education Fund is a funder of The Fulcrum.)
As we look to history, it has always been the mystics and scientists, innovators and outliers who saw the future most clearly and acted to push — or call — society forward, to awaken from our slumber of the way things are and envision a better future. The stories of their personal transformation inspire us to be better individually and collectively. With this inspiration, we can and must transform our nation into a more perfect union.
As co-founders of the Bridge Alliance, we are inspired and challenged by the problems facing our country. Our 100 member organizations work daily to protect the ideals of our American Dream so we can create healthy self-governance that has never fully existed before. Our members work to harness the tension of our differences as we enact our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, balancing individual and community needs.
<p>Our constitutional republic and democratic ideals are being challenged daily — from our own actions to foreign influence campaigns. In our search for healthy self governance, <em>we</em> must put country before party or self-interest as we explore solutions to the complex problems facing our nation and the world. Doing so will not only make our government more effective but it will also strengthen the soul of who we are as a country. </p><p>Decades of work by cross-partisan practitioners, while having many successes and garnering the support of millions of Americans, has had limited impact on the social fabric as a whole, and we have watched our public discourse degrade into a raw power struggle. </p><p>The struggle continues despite the deep love for our country that we believe many or most Americans share. As we witness the division separating us as a people, we are reminded of a dysfunctional family: We take sides, blame others and treat each other without love or a sense of empathy. How effective could we be if we took a stand for the health of our national family? </p><p>Taking a stand means having an understanding that we are a diverse nation and to thrive as a people we must provide room for more diverse perspectives. At our summit last October, this was generally agreed upon, yet we realized that the democracy reform field itself lacks diversity. It is currently a mostly white, older and progressive-leaning; people of color, conservative thinkers, youth and the LGBTQI community are underrepresented.</p><p>The Bridge Alliance immediately set out to address this problem as an important component of our 2019 strategic plan. We created a diversity and opportunity task force to study the problem and establish a process for ensuring the democracy field becomes genuinely diverse and representative of the country as a whole. </p><p>Diversity and Opportunity — meaning diversity with regard to race/ethnicity, sex/gender, social identity, religion, ideology and age — will be the operating system of the October 2019 summit. Diversity is often the topic of such meetings — but our meeting topic is living into a multicultural, pluralistic democracy. We will discuss how we are going to create it within a diverse community and just do it. So it's the operating system, not the objective of the meeting. We believe that, for the Bridge Alliance and the cross-partisan movement to be more impactful as we plan for 2020 and beyond, we must truly reflect the diversity that defines America.</p><p>But we can't do this alone! We are asking citizens (meaning you) to help us.</p><p>These words by Langston Hughes, a great African-American poet, have never been more relevant than they are today: "America never was America to me/And yet I swear this oath/America will be!"</p><p>We can and must embrace our diversity as the operating system of our nation. Despite our many frailties, America is exceptional because from the outset its citizens saw themselves as participants in an experiment that would have implications for all of mankind. Our task is far from complete. </p><p>Send us your story (written or video link) that you want to tell the children and grandchildren of our future to <a href="mailto:story@BridgeAlliance.us" rel="noopener noreferrer">story@BridgeAlliance.us</a>. We are developing a scrapbook for the future story of America that may be used to inspire participants at our summit.</p><p>What is your oath today? What will America be for our children and grandchildren? What stories will you tell them? The journey that is the United States was started by visionaries, scientists, mystics and outliers more than 200 years ago with the motto <em>e pluribus unum</em>: Out of many, we are one. America is exceptional because it was launched with a dream to take the diverse many and make them one. Let us fulfill this dream.</p><p>The journey will never end.</p>
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